 Reflections
by Ricky Flores
New York City, August 2003
Every once in a while an opportunity presents itself to re-evaluate
your work and find a way to communicate your life experience to
someone who is just starting out in the business. It’s an
opportunity to re-examine why you decided that photojournalism
was the career path of your choice and that no other option was
acceptable.
For me, photography represented a way to understand what was taking
place around me when I was growing up in the South Bronx. I was
a young first generation Puerto Rican descendent born at Bellevue
Hospital, historically and infamously known for treatment of psychiatric
patients.
 At the age of five, I lost my father who died of bronchial asthma.
Shortly afterward my mother and I moved to the South Bronx. It
was a turbulent time. The Young Lords were active in my community
but on the decline. Landlords defaulted on their taxes and abandoned
their apartment buildings, or burned down the buildings for insurance.
Street gangs were the norm where I lived on Fox and Longwood Avenue,
and one gang, the Savage Skulls, received national notoriety because
of the violent and tragic death of one of a group of brothers at
the hands of a rival gang. Anger fueled by our abandonment by the
city was commonplace and was expressed by turning over abandoned
cars or throwing other debris into the middle of the street and
setting it on fire. We could always count on the Fire Department
to come, but no one else, and firefighters would continue to have
a profound influence on my life. Eventually, troops of psychologists,
psychiatrists and social workers descended on my neighborhood to
try to understand the destruction of an entire community.
In the midst of this I as well always wondered why these things
were taking place in my community. As I hit my eighteenth birthday,
a friend of mine turned me on to photography and with a small inheritance
that I received from the death of my father I was able to purchase
my first camera. In the beginning it was natural for me take photographs
of my friends and family at their homes, on the streets or at the
local businesses. What I didn’t know then was that I was
making a historical document about life in the South Bronx from
a perspective that was not seen from people from outside of the
community.
When I entered Empire State college, I began to re-examine my
life as a Puerto Rican man from the South Bronx. I started to realize
the importance of my work, documenting life in my community. During
that period I benefited from mentoring from several Professors
of photography and community activists who were active within my
community or within the world of photography. The camera became
a tool to understand what was taking place around me. Since that
time it has been a means to explore a wide variety of subjects
and issues that have caught my attention.
When I was invited along with other professionals to act as supervisory
staff for the Latino Reporter, a convention-centered student newspaper
for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists which was
holding a convention in New York City in June of 2003, I accepted,
although at the time I was not entirely clear as to why I did so.
What followed was one of the most intense learning and teaching
experiences of my life. For a whole week I worked with Carlos Osorio,
a photographer for the Associated Press and four young photojournalists
from around the country. We covered a host of issues ranging from
street life on 42nd street to life in the surrounding communities
from Ground Zero to the Lower East Side to Washington Heights.
In the midst of this, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger
Jr., addressed a workshop at the convention on "Journalism
Ethics and Diversity in the Wake of the Jayson Blair Scandal."
 The fallout of the Jayson Blair incident has had a profound impact
in newsrooms around the nation. The professionals who staffed and
supervised the students felt that we needed to explore the issues
of ethics and the impact that the scandal may have on people of
color. I struggled with wanting to cover these issues on my own
or turning them over to young photographers who wanted to be able
to prove themselves capable of the task. . Carlos and I fought
with them everyday; we cajoled, tutored, pushed and yelled to make
them understand the importance of the opportunity that was being
presented to them, and something wonderful then happened, they
all came through it in ways that was totally unexpected and breath
taking. Through the eyes of the students we received a lesson in
Journalism 101. Our paper was called by the New York Post, requesting
our student reporter notes on the Sulzberger’s talk. The
editor who responded politely and firmly refused and instructed
them to pick up a copy of the Latino Reporter the next day. Our
paper was displayed and quoted on CSPAN which taped the Sulzberger
talk. USA Today ran an article on their lifestyle section on the
Latino Reporter.
Although the Jayson Blair scandal has raised questions on how
people of color are treated in the newsroom, and whether it was
favoritism or maybe lack of support, the general consensus was
that this was an individual with a dual life in the major newsroom
who self-destructed in a very public way. Color had no role in
this incident, only poor management. But the tale remains a cautionary
one for those of us who are trying to break into or work within
this industry. No issue, angle or slant will be left unexplored
if we fail as journalists. Today we write or shoot the lead story;
the next day we can very well become the lead.
I look at that week with a sense of profound pride that the future
of our industry is in good hands. Our small band of photojournalists
and journalists clearly understand why they are in the business,
one that is often left thankless and belittled by our very own.
They share a mission and purpose for doing what we do on a daily
basis. More importantly they see real value in the work, despite
the damage that commercial news ventures have been doing to our
industry. I walked away wanting to influence those of us who have
not had the opportunity to take the chance and share knowledge
with those that are coming up. The rewards and the stakes are great:
we either let future photojournalists capitulate to the needs of
large corporate newspapers and magazines or we instill in them
a sense of mission and a vision of how the world really is and
how it should be.
Ricky Flores is staff photographer at The Journal
News, Westchester, New York.
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